The domino effect is getting a test drive at General Motors. Some 5,800 workers may push another 296,000 GM workers into unemployment. If they do, watch what happens to employment by GM's suppliers.

It can go the other way -- and no doubt will -- in 2000, when 100,000 noncompliant suppliers shut down GM. But then, it can be explained the other way: a noncompliant auto industry shuts down 100,000 suppliers.

The best you can say about it is that the university economists who debate such matters to no conclusion will lose their jobs if this happens.

This is a UPI story on Excite (June 12).

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FLINT, Mich., June 12 (UPI) Nearly 51,000 General Motors workers are idled as the effects of a United Auto Workers strike in Flint, Mich., ripple through the automaker's North American operations.

The week-old strike at GM's Flint Metal Plant has shut down 12 North American assembly plants and idled workers at more than two dozen parts plants in 10 states, Canada and Mexico.

Virtually all 32 GM assembly plants in North America could be forced to shut down for lack of parts within days. GM employs about 296,500 hourly workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Five assembly plants were idled today. . . .

The largest partial closings were at the Mexico West electrical and Delnosa Electronics plants in Mexico, where more than 10,000 workers were turned Thursday away because of lack of supplies.

The UAW accelerated its campaign against the automaker Thursday when 5,800 UAW members walked out of the Delphi East plant in Flint, Mich., which makes parts for nearly every GM vehicle made in North America.